Emancipation

“Reform and opening” started from the top with the seminal leadership transition from Mao to Deng. Deng Xiaoping heralded China’s boom in late 1978 when he called for experiments with “economic democracy” and “emancipation” from orthodox ideas. But the boom was not simply a top-down, state-orchestrated phenomenon. In fact, the biggest contribution of the state, especially in the first phase of growth, was to get out of the way. Farmers were liberated from collectives, sparking a wildfire of capitalism in the countryside. Urban markets and industry were freed to “grow out of the plan,” making profits on surplus production and creating powerful incentives for rapid growth.

The Birth of Private Workers, The Death of People’s Communes

One Child Policy Stimulated Growth

People Who Fall Behind Will Be Beaten

Deng Understood That the World Had Changed

Fan Jianchuan

Founder, Jianchuan Group

Fan Jianchuan, a private collector, founded China's largest museum, the Jianchuan Museum, in 2006. Fan's project includes eight museums commemorating the Sino-Japanese War. Twelve others deal with the 10-year Cultural Revolution, initiated by Mao Zedong in 1966. Fan displays more than 200,000 historic photos, posters, stamps, chinaware, letters, uniforms, badges and other antiques from the Mao era. The museums also house his collection of more than 10,000 paintings, manuscripts and other relics from wars in China's modern history, before the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Fan has spent 30 million yuan (US$3.6 million) over the past 20 years collecting the antiques. His museums, covering 33 hectares, cost another 100 million yuan to build. Fan, 47, had been a soldier, a teacher and vice mayor of his hometown Yibin City for two years before founding the Chengdu-based Jianchuan Group, which is involved in real estate development, hotels and cultural projects.

For the first 30 years of the New China, from ’49 to ’79, we essentially had a propertyless society. It wasn’t just me who didn’t have any property. Even department heads also were propertyless. They made more, about 200 RMB a month, but their houses were government owned. Even Mao Zedong’s furniture was provided to him by the State Council. I have documents here that show Mao Zedong’s furniture was rented. His bed, his cabinets, everything was rented. Every month he paid, I think, 80 RMB in rent for his furniture. At most, you owned a watch, or a bicycle, or a radio. Radio’s were rare. All of these were very rare. If a single family had all of these, then they were a rich family. A family normally had, at most, a few hundred RMB worth of property, less than $100. After this 30 years, especially after housing reform -- before, the government would give out housing, now people were required to buy their own houses -- I feel like the great majority of urban Chinese bought a house, some even two or three houses, they also bought storefronts. Rural Chinese built their own houses. If you looked in the countryside around here 30 years ago, before the Reform and Opening, you would see all of the houses were made with straw. If people in the countryside had a roof made with tiles, they were certainly a very prosperous family. Now, there are almost no tile-roofed houses left, almost all of them are made with concrete. The peasants have their own houses, they built them themselves. Most people in the cities have bought their houses. A large proportion of city residents have bought cars. At this moment, in 2008, China has produced a segment of society, probably 300 to 500 million people, that has a certain amount of property. As soon as a person has property, he has roots. When he has roots, he starts to worry. He doesn’t want revolution, chaos, or riots. He says, "I have property already, don't indiscriminately take it away from me, don't rob me." Society is stable when a portion of society has property. He hopes that this portion of society, the middle class, gets larger and larger. And I think that we are really heading very quickly in that direction. The middle class is growing. The more people have property, the more stable society is, the more controlled people are. Because people have other things to worry about, this is the way i understand it. Take Chengdu as an example, a lot of the people in Chengdu, even normal workers, have bought cars. This would have been unimaginable just 10 years ago. I think this is a very significant change, because this property will be transfered to their children and then society has this continuity and stability, this attachment. Before, there was nothing to be passed down, there was no concept of heritage, a concept that we now have. It’s a very significant change that will influence the way the entire structure of society changes, including political change.